Taking values seriously

Bykvist, Krister

doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03071-1

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…On another view, magnitudes are Platonic universals or abstract entities of some other sort, which exist independently of the things that instantiate them. Views like this have been defended by Mundy (1987), Michell (1997Michell ( , 1999, Eddon (2013), Swoyer (1987), andPeacocke (2015); Bykvist (2021) defends such a view specifically in the theory of value. Arguably, this sort of approach was taken by the founding fathers of modern utility theory: von Neumann and Morgenstern (1947) assigned real numbers to abstract, nonnumerical values (which they called "utilities") rather than to outcomes or lotteries that instantiate those values.…”

Section: Qualitative Social Welfare Functionalsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Some might take themselves to have a similar intuitive notion of addition defined on values, so that

a \circ b = c

can be taken to mean that

c

is the sum of the values

a

and

b

. (Something like this approach to value concatenation is suggested by Bykvist, 2021, though he also posits certain “bridge principles” between values and value‐bearers to help make the operation more intelligible. )…”

Section: Interpersonal Extensive Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

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Ethics without numbers

Nebel

2023

Philos Phenomenol Research

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This paper develops and explores a new framework for theorizing about the measurement and aggregation of well‐being. It is a qualitative variation on the framework of social welfare functionals developed by Amartya Sen. In Sen's framework, a social or overall betterness ordering is assigned to each profile of real‐valued utility functions. In the qualitative framework developed here, numerical utilities are replaced by the properties they are supposed to represent. This makes it possible to characterize the measurability and interpersonal comparability of well‐being directly, without the use of restrictive invariance conditions, and to distinguish between real changes in well‐being and merely representational changes in the unit of measurement. The qualitative framework is shown to have important implications for a range of issues in axiology and social choice theory, including the characterization of welfarism, axiomatic derivations of utilitarianism, the meaningfulness of prioritarianism, the informational requirements of variable‐population ethics, the impossibility theorems of Arrow and others, and the metaphysics of value.

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Section: Qualitative Social Welfare Functionalsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Some might take themselves to have a similar intuitive notion of addition defined on values, so that

a \circ b = c

can be taken to mean that

c

is the sum of the values

a

and

b

Section: Interpersonal Extensive Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics without numbers

Nebel

2023

Philos Phenomenol Research

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“…The fact that something can be better for me without it is being the case that it would put me on a higher level of well-being needs to be taken into account when we discuss the implications of our proposal for issues in population ethics.18 See, for example vonStechow (1984) andKennedy (2001).19 See vonStechow (2008). For a different take on issues of measurement, seeBykvist (2021) andNebel (Forthcoming).20 This is part of Broome's project in his Weighing Goods(Broome, 1987).21 Arrhenius and Rabinowicz (2016, footnote 26) claim that even if circular this account might still be illuminating.22 This proposal is related toKlein (1980). In a nutshell, Klein argues that the meaning of the comparative Fer comes from the meaning of F.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Glad to be alive: How we can compare a person's existence and her non‐existence in terms of what is better or worse for this person

Piller

2023

Philosophical Books

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This paper defends the claim that if a person P exists, there can be true positive comparisons between P's existence and P's never having existed at all in terms of what is better or worse for P. If correct, this view will have significant implications for various fundamental issues in population ethics. I try to show how arguments to the contrary fail to take note of a general ambiguity in comparisons when compared alternatives contain their own different standards (or, in the case of non‐existence, a lack thereof) on which to base these comparisons. After having answered arguments against the possibility of making positive comparisons, the paper develops a positive account of how to make existence/non‐existence comparisons in terms of personal value whilst accepting that a person's non‐existence fails to make any contact with the relevant categories of personal value. The guiding idea is the following: When some item satisfies some relevant standard, we can, I argue, infer that it satisfies this standard better than something that fails to satisfy this standard (be this failure due to empirical or conceptual reasons).

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“…Support‐explanationism is compatible with different views about these general issues. See Bykvist (forthcoming) for further discussion of value magnitudes in particular.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining normative reasons

Fogal

Risberg

2021

Nous

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In this paper, we present and defend a natural yet novel analysis of normative reasons. According to what we call support-explanationism, for a fact to be a normative reason to φ is for it to explain why there's normative support for φ-ing. We critically consider the two main rival forms of explanationismought-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about ought, and goodexplanationism, on which reasons explain facts about goodness-as well as the popular Reasons-First view, which takes the notion of a normative reason to be normatively fundamental. Support-explanationism, we argue, enjoys many of the virtues of these views while avoiding their drawbacks. We conclude by exploring several further important implications: among other things, we argue that the influential metaphor of 'weighing' reasons is inapt, and propose a better one; that, contrary to what Berker (2019) suggests, there's no reason for nonnaturalists about normativity to accept the Reasons-First view; and that, contrary to what Wodak (2020b) suggests, explanationist views can successfully accommodate what he calls 'redundant reasons'.1 Hence, while there are views of normative reasons that sever the seemingly-intimate connection to explanation, we think such views are (other things being equal) at a disadvantage, and engaging with them is beyond the scope of this paper. One example is the view of reasons as premises of good reasoning (see e.g.

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Taking values seriously

Cited by 4 publications

References 22 publications

Ethics without numbers

Ethics without numbers

Glad to be alive: How we can compare a person's existence and her non‐existence in terms of what is better or worse for this person

Explaining normative reasons

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